I believe we have real interests in the world that we have to defend. Defending those interests is only possible if we have a global military presence. We face real enemies in the world because our historical actions have placed us in conflicts with people that don't like us, but it's wishful thinking to assert that we could have avoided these conflicts in the past and it's foolhardy to pretend that we can avoid more such conflicts in the future. This is especially true because many of our worst enemies in the world are irrational operators whom we can't consistently influence without a credible threat of force.I've already looked at America's interests and the need for a global military presence. Let's take a look at the third statement: what role does our past foreign policy decisions play in our analysis of current foreign policy options?
When we examine the world of today and make decisions that will shape the world of the future, we have to understand that the world of today was shaped in the past by real people looking at real circumstances, making really important decisions based on really imperfect information. It's commonly argued that America has created many of the problems we face today by supporting people like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and others. It's an easy accusation to make, but it tends to fall apart when our past foreign policy decisions are analyzed in context. Let's take a very brief snapshot of our history for the last century.
We're in Iraq because of 9/11. Regardless what specifically motivated Bush to go to war (WMDs, oil, anti-terrorism, cultural imperialism, whatever), it's hard for me to imagine a world in which 9/11 didn't happen but we invaded Iraq anyway. Why did 9/11 happen? Al Qaeda has tried to justify 9/11 by claiming that it is a response to America's presence in Saudi Arabia, to our attacks against Iraq during and following the first Gulf War and to our support for Israel [6].
Why was America in Saudi Arabia? Because of the stand-off that resulted from the first Gulf War. Why did we fight the first Gulf War? Because Saddam very clearly threatened our national interests by conquering Kuwait and putting his powerful military in easy striking distance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE [7]. We simply can't risk letting so much the world's oil supply fall under the control of a violent, capricious tyrant.
Why was Saddam powerful enough to attempt the invasion of Kuwait? In part because of U.S. military support during the '80s. Why did the U.S. support Saddam? In general, we supported him because we were in the middle of a cold war and we needed allies in a region that was (because of oil) critically important. More specifically, we supported Saddam because he was a counter-weight to the power of Iran, a country that attacked our embassy and held American diplomats hostage for more than a year.
Iranians attacked our embassy because they thought we were covertly manipulating their government and trying to undermine their Islamic revolution [8]. The Iranians badly misjudged our capabilities and our intentions, but it is true that we were a long-time ally of the Shah (whom they hated). Again, our support of the Shah was based on our strategic need for allies in the region in light of the Cold War that developed after WWII. It's possible to argue that America is at fault for the cold war, but only if you argue that we could have supported White Russian forces and defeated the Bolsheviks by military intervention after WWI [9].
Regarding American support for Israel, that too has an internal logic through history, from a Cold-war desire to support a democratic nation against attacks by soviet supported enemies, back to a decision to support the creation of a homeland for the Jews after the genocide of WWII, back to the historical reality that the land of "Palestine" was merely a province of the Ottoman empire up until British gained Mandate control after defeating the Ottomans in WWI.
Should we have fought Saddam in the first Gulf War? Should we have fought the cold war? Should we have fought WWII? What about WWI? How far back should we go in deciding that America had no right to intervene in the world to protect her own interests? Should we have just decided to let the Brits keep their colonies so that nobody in the world would be offended by our actions?
Our past policies have always been based to some degree on a need to protect American interests throughout the world. Some of those decisions have been flawed but that is unavoidable: we have always had imperfect leaders, they have always been beholden to an imperfect constituency, and no American has ever been blessed with perfect information about present circumstances or the future consequences of various policy options. We are where we are because our past leaders have tried to do what's best for America, and it's impossible to say how much worse our history might look if America had chosen not to intervene in the world.
It's easy to identify various bad apples that have in some ways been supported by America in the past and turned against us, but at the same time we should recognize the positive results of our interference in foreign affairs (a prosperous Western Europe, prosperous Japan and South Korea, a victory in the Cold War, and stable world trade that promotes prosperity in America). Only by ignoring the truth about what happened in the past can you claim that all of our past interventions in the world were unnecessary and counterproductive.
[6] Al Qaeda's Fatwa
[7] John Kifner, New York Times, August 6, 1990
[8] The Fallacy of Power
[9] Toward an Entangling Alliance
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